Tuesday 23 September 2008

Getting a Start in Life

Twelve year old Rebecca has a hole in her heart. It is a congenital defect and it may cause her problems in the future. But it is not by a long way her biggest challenge in life. Rebecca's parents are both heroine addicts and they have abandoned her to her granny who is now in her eighties.

Granny does her best for Rebecca but raising a child at that age is an enormous challenge. And recently Granny and Rebecca got some terrible news: Granny has cancer. It is not yet known how badly or how quickly it will affect her health, but even the knowledge of having it is weighing heavily on her ability to cope.

Rebecca attends a school near where she lives in Dublin's south inner city. The school is designated as a disadvantaged school, a term which fails to convey the immense difficulties faced by both its pupils and teachers alike. Many students have acute learning problems. Some, like Rebecca, have attention deficit sydrome. Many more are hyperactive or have low self esteem. Some can barely read or write. And still more have behavioural issues which flow directly from family environments which are chronically dysfunctional. Then there are those who barely attend. One of Rebecca's friends, Natasha, attended for only one month over both terms last year.

Her teachers say Rebecca tries as hard as she can despite her ADS. But often she retreats from learning and finds it impossible to stay focussed. Even if Rebecca had one to one tuition, one teacher said, it would be a huge challenge to keep her from leaving school and to get her to Junior Cert level. As it is, with twenty others in the class, there is little hope that Rebecca will obtain a successful Junior cert.

Teachers in most shools are charged with the task of covering the maths or geography curriculum and getting their pupils to obtain reasonable grades in Junior cert. But in Rebecca's school the mission is of a wholly different order. The school's role is more social than educational. One major aim is simply to keep the children in school for another few years, so that they aren't on the street all day, every day. Another aim is to provide basic literacy and numeracy skills which are normally associated with the early phase of primary school.

It is tempting to think that the state ignores the plight of schools such as Rebecca's. In fact, the state has made enormous efforts in recent years to help children in disadvantaged schools. Through the DEIS (Delivering Equality of Opportunity in Schools) programme, disadvantaged schools have been identified and targeted for extra resources.

Rebecca's school has a much lower pupil teacher ratio than the average; there are extra resource teachers and special needs teachers; the school gets much higher capitaion grants and has state of the art facilities in terms of teaching equipment and classroom kit; and the pupils, many of whom would otherwise be malnourished, are provided with a lunchtime meal.

Yet the teachers in Rebecca's school face almost insurmountable challenges. Some of their pupils will drop out, get addicted to drugs, or fall pregnant. Parental support is often absent. A neutral parent is considered a bonus - a small number of parents have threatened teachers physically for reprimanding their often difficult children.

Some pupils who stay in school will be seen to make little progress. One teacher felt disheartened and said she sometimes wondered if all the effort and resources weren't a waste of time. But of course, we know we have to try. If society can be judged on how it treats its most vulnerable citizens, then it will fail miserably if it doesn't attempt to help these poor souls who are given such a terrible start in life.

The trouble is that the school is being expected to do far more than it can ever hope to achieve. The problem is not educational, but a breakdown in how society has provided for its citizens over the long term. Teachers in Rebecca's school deserve admiration and respect for facing up to a problem that wider society and its political masters have created. The lesson must be, try hard to help Rebecca make a better life for herself, whatever the odds, but try far far harder to build a more inclusive society where there are fewer and fewer twelve year olds in Rebecca's predicament.

4 comments:

The problem, Dear Lord, the problem comes from fixing the current one and not thinking on the next. That school was designed to fix a issue of the 1880s. In the coming years we will have the new Irish, and it is not racist to think that there will be problems and fixing them will require something more than a weird cross between Blackrock and a prison.And much as I hate to say it, it is too late for those kids in that system and it was before they were born.

Vince,I think the additional burden of teaching children with a poor ability in English will put extra strain on the system. But probably nothing that can't be dealt with with some extra language resources. Given the contribution of our immigrants, I think it's a small price to pay.

You are right that it is too late to give many kids the start we would like, but it is right to try and give at least some of them a better start. Even to teach them how to read and write and do basic calculations will benefit them enormously.

But the big picture is social. And it requires enormous effort and vision to tackle it. Something our political system isn't very good at.

In the past we had a method, but it was a haven for every bas-tard with an axe to grind. Sorry I getting ahead of myself. The schools system will never be what those kids need and there is in every school a cohort that the system does not fit, for one reason or another. But the system works for most and for those it works for they come out with a hardness -the if I could do it than why cannot they do it- But that does not get to the nub of the issue. Which is that this is happening in each and every state where our system is in operation from NZ USA UK here, all of them.I was went to high school within the first ten years of the free education, and have seen at first hand the unique social engineering in operation with the patricians. Those kids who would have payed were streamed to 1;1 day one. Nothing odd about this, well there was only one boys primary in this little town so they should have gotten the same at least on the surface the same. During my Bolshy period I believed this to be a set up. And there was an aspect of this, it was not the whole story. Much of the school advantage came from the home.Your kids and mine, if I ever have any, will have a distinct advantage because we know that education is a process and can programme the kids to absorb. And will cut this process to the cloth we have.Back to the main point, The system did have schools which could have been used but because of the level of hell on this earth that they generated, were removed.When Monsignor Flaherty -boys towns- came here in the late 30s he was shocked with what he came across.

I am currently involved in a consultation on the regeneration of the Liberties in Dublin.

I am very struck by the difference in ethnic composition between the population of the area and those who turn up at the consultations.

There is a significant ethnic population if the area but they are completely absent from the consultation. Perhaps this is a reflection of the low local participation in the process, though this has been increasing over recent months.

It is quite disturbing, though, as it is clear that there is significant ethnic participation in the activities of the local parish centre.

About Me : Fúmsa

I was born in and grew up in Donegal. I studied engineering at UCG. Afterwards worked in Athlone, Galway, then Dublin. Then I lived in France for 3 years before returning to Dublin.
Hobbies: hillwalking, short fiction, film. I am interested in political economy and human interest stories. I do a little radio work in the form of a human interest commentator for Northern Sound and a political panellist, and occasionally presenter, on an Irish language current affairs program based in Dublin.
Saolaíodh i dTír Chonaill mé i 1973. Chaith mé seal ag Ollscoil na Gaillimhe (innealtóireacht) áit ar fhoghlaim mé mo chuid Gaeilge. Chaith mé trí bliana áille i nDeisceart na Fraince sular fhill mé ar an fhód dúchais i 2005. Cónaí orm anois san ard-chathair. Spéis agam i gcúsraí polaitíochta agus eacnamaíochta. An-suim agam freisin sa litríocht - go háirid an gearrscéal.